


Renounce Vialism

by marsakat



Series: demaverse [1]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Dema fic, Demaverse, Diary/Journal, Dubious Consent, M/M, Origin Story, References to Drugs, dema
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 03:51:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15331104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsakat/pseuds/marsakat
Summary: From the journal of a man who cannot remember his own name014 08MOON 10 - 018 07MOON 10





	Renounce Vialism

**Author's Note:**

> a trench origin story

_ 014 08MOON 10 _

I’m not a good man. I’m not a bad man, at least not all the time. I don’t think I have bad intentions, but neither do I really plan on doing anything to help anyone else. It’s just that I don’t see how any of this matters—I am so unimportant, no one notices or cares either way.

I only think about this in the brief time between nights, when sobriety catches me for a few minutes. Before I dose myself again. Now is one of those times, and it’s why I’m writing pointlessly. It makes no sense to record my thoughts and feelings; I’m just a tiny bug in this massive world. Everything else moves around me, and all I do is live from one day to the next. I exist, as do all my friends, though they wrap themselves in the bliss of the drugs and chaos of the night. I do too, and join in their mindless chants of ‘tonight is the night’ and ‘let’s live for the moment’.

I am no better than they, despite how critical I am right now. In a matter of minutes, I’ll be gone—lost in the haze and back with them, having the closest thing to fun in this hell. We’re all here for a distraction. 

No one is more distracted than me. Most times I can’t even remember my own name. I can’t remember the parents who gave it to me, and when I guess the syllables, any arrangement feels foreign. So for now, I sign off as just simply

-Me

* * *

_ 014 08MOON 20 _

The ache throughout my body is the only sign that I’m a person with nerve endings that connect to my pounding, swollen brain. Every day is a rinse, wash, repeat; wake up maybe in my own bed, rarely alone and squint at the late afternoon sun. I’ve forgotten to close my blinds again.

Extricate myself from the mass of limbs, catalog the bruises and bitemarks on my skin in the floor length mirror. There’s no sense of propriety or shame in being naked--doesn’t matter to anyone else in the room, whether it’s a friend or someone who found me last night. Drugs cannot fully replace what it’s like to fuck or be fucked, the building of tension and the snap of orgasm. Safe to say I’ve slept with all my friends in many ways and combinations, but what’s a few diseases between us than a unifier? In this day and age, anything can be cured with a burning injection in the ass at some dingy clinic fully of people just like us.

And when I say friends, I mean the shapeless, disorganized group of people that I can’t remember when or where I met them, but they come and go as they please. I may have known them for years, or maybe we’ve just met that night. But by the time the sun rises, I know that they know everything about me.

Because there isn’t much to learn. I don’t have secrets. I have nothing to hide. There’s nothing interesting enough to conceal. We’re all the same. We’re exactly like each other; same words, same thoughts. Our clothes all match; colorful, and so tight, if the pills didn’t make you lightheaded, the constriction kept you from breathing deep enough. It just made you want to remove the clothes, and skin felt so heavenly to absorb the sweat of someone else. 

We laugh until there’s tears streaming down our faces, but no one can tell the difference between the drops or perspiration. We’re not supposed to mention any feelings beside the high we ride, or fun we’re having. 

Life is all about the thrills, our cars sliding as the driver takes turns too fast. Pressed to the seats as we fly up the ramp and take air, racing the other cars with lights streaming behind. Music thumping from the radio, rattling my molars. 

I’m all about the music. Aware of what’s playing even though it’s all the same and nothing matters. 

I may not know anyone’s name, but I know the melody that was playing when I became aware of  _ him _ . When  _ he _ had me against the wall in the bathroom. The bass rumbled through the cold tiles I was pressed against, and I could feel a snare in my joints. 

“You’re gonna remember me.” He said and he was right. He had an uncanny way of being right about everything. 

Gotta go-- there’s a knock at my door.

-Me

* * *

_ 014 08Moonfull night 25 _

i’m here don’t worry i’m fine. i don’t know how i’m doing this? 

i saw him tonight i saw him tonight i think it was him 

he laughed

i laughed

but i’m the joke

green purple blue green yellow pink brain on the floor

i see colors on my hands even when i’m alone

i have no lips i have no words

Gotta go

-Me

* * *

_ 014 08MOON 26 _

Sorry about my random… rant above. I just--I’m not really that good with words, and definitely am worse when I’m high. 

I did see  _ him _ again. I know he’s still out there, and it’s not like we’ve fallen out or something. He’s found me, but he’s just not coming for me much anymore.

I get it, I’m boring. He told me, laughing, with his too-perfect teeth. White shards that taunted me with open-mouthed hilarity.

“Another dumb club kid.” He called me. “Bright as sunshine, but simpler than rain.”

I had no response; was he too smart for me, or did he just not make any sense?

He called me so many names, since I had no name to give him. That first night he called me ‘Spooky’, since my face was painted with red. We had ditched our bright colors for blacks and dark shades for a horror theme. First impressions always lasted, he told me. Even when I was shocking pink, he still called me by my first nickname.

“Sunshine” he called me during the daytime. 

“Spooky” when we haunted the night.

“Sugar” as I lay paralyzed on the wood floor of his apartment. 

Ignore I said that.

He’s not a bad person, at least not all the time. He gave me purpose, he made me start to see things in a new way—pulling back the curtain to show me that I’m just another ant in the hive. I used to think my gang and I were the center of the universe. We were all that mattered; we alone had figured out how to be free. 

And though we have no worries about where our food and shelter comes from, or how we will afford the drugs and cars—I know now that we’re more prisoners than those that live in faraway lockups. Everything is provided for us, and we gave away all independent thought. Our wills have been snatched by unseen profiteers.

These aren’t my words, these are his. I was never one for big ideas, or any introspection of my own. He took pity on me, so he says, and would take me up to the top of the closest building after a night where he pried me from the arms of someone else in the club. We’d go to the top, and he’d force me to stay awake for a good few hours beyond sunrise. It was so cold at the top, the wind whipping my face kept me from ever getting comfortable, though being in his arms felt the closest to safety and intimacy I ever found after a night out.

“Look. Look down at all those people.” He gestured to the parade below, the unfortunate souls who had jobs to do and places to be so early in the morning.

I’d always been told they were trapped by their day-to-day. We all had laughed at the ‘squares that had to be up early’. That cursed at us when we were too noisy walking down their residential streets. 

But weren’t we all snared?

He said we were. I believe him. That’s why I am writing this down—I feel just the slightest bit awake. Life is normally so hard to keep track of, that I just feel like I’m in a constant dream. I forget everything greater than a few days before.

The only clarity I have is him and his beautiful eyes that are unlike any I’ve seen before.

-Me

* * *

_ 014 10MOON 16 _

Last night felt like nothing had changed between us.

He found me, and we talked and once again he took me away. 

I was dancing with a pretty girl, with hair redder than anything I’d ever seen before. My face was in her hair and I could only breathe the smoke that she was bathed in. My hands on her hips, my knee between her thighs, but then he whispered. “Spooky” in my ear.

“Come away with me Spooky. Let’s have some fun.”

Even though his idea of fun usually scares me, I left the fire and let him drag me to his car. 

Everyone else painted their cars with bright colors; mine was dark purple, glow-in-the-dark swirls with shining stars.  _ His _ was black, and sleek and by any other standard, dull. But compared to all the others, he was the most unique. 

“We’re gonna fuck some shit up tonight, Sweetheart.” He told me, and my heart raced alongside the car.

We stopped at city hall--a white marble structure that towered and intimidated. I may have seen it before.

He popped the trunk, and pulled out four backpacks. He showed me which corners to place them, and how to hide from the guards that waved flashlights like swords. 

I didn’t open the bags, and he didn’t have to tell me not to. It was just a game, to not get captured by the watchers. I didn’t want to think; I am too used to being told what to do, that it absolves me of any sin.

“Good job.” His praise has always been the strongest drug, biggest motivator for me. “Now let’s watch the show.”

Gliding in his car, we ascended another building. Rules never applied to us, and doors were never locked for him. He slipped another pill between my lips and I knew better than to refuse. And then I was back to my baseline of a dream state. 

And just like how I questioned any of my memories, everything that happened earlier that night was possibly unreal. It felt solid, tangible, but made no sense. 

The sex was real. It always was; the burn, the sweat, being pushed into new and unforgiving positions.  _ He _ was always good at making me explore outside my comfort zone, and he peppered me with affection and kisses as my body was punished. 

Around us, the world turned into a nightmare. Demons and fire erupted below and billowed up to swallow us in the black cloud. An explosion shook the building as I came, and I knew that  _ this _ dream had destroyed.  _ I _ had killed as I slept or imagined, or lived… wherever I really was. 

I knew nothing until I woke up in my own bed, with you, my diary, at my side. His only trace were the marks he made on my skin. Maybe this was all wishful dreaming, but he’s always been the clearest beacon in my memory.

-Me

* * *

_ 014 11MOON 24 _

My lover scares me.

He’s powerful and rebellious and unafraid. 

He tells me that I inspire him, and that we may be in love, if either of us knew what that actually felt like.

I’m his motivation for tearing down this facade, this fake world.

“Sunshine, you’re everything wrong with the world--wait, no I don’t mean that to be mean.” He told me as we lay together. Intimate and not sexually. “You’re just. You may not know it, but there’s a kindness in you, but you’ve never had a place to be…”

“Be what?” I asked.

“Be yourself. You’re just like anyone else, but I can see that it’s destroying you.” His kisses feel like petals on my cheeks. 

It had felt the same way after his favorite pills where I lay there still and he touched and kissed me and whispered I was safe. I have always handed over control to someone else, so I wasn’t angry when he took mine. I blinked yes, and let myself be carried away.

“One day, I hope to see you as pure as you are in the quiet moments when your eyes focus on my face.” He whispers to me time and time again. I know what he means. It’s the same times as the times that I can write here. Lucidity.

He tells me stories about mountains and ravines and rivers that run through rocky paths. Groups on  _ the outside _ , beyond the rules of the city, that are the truly free ones. He’s met them. He’s talked to some of them as they conduct missions and give him ideas of things to do to destabilize this technicolor prison. One day he’ll take me there, he promises. 

My lover anchors me.

He keeps me from slipping into complete loss of long term memory.

From the moment we met, and I tried to refuse hearing his name. I didn’t want to be responsible for holding someone in my heart, for tethering them to me as I plummeted into oblivion.

But he held me to the wall, he made me bleed and be reborn.

“Say my name.” He demanded. “Say my name!”

“J-Joshua!” I cried out, searing those letters into my very soul.

-Me

* * *

_ 015 01MOON 09 _

I have less friends than I remember. The clubs seem more empty. No one says that people are disappearing, because we’re still just trying to have fun.

Joshua is scared, though he doesn’t want me to know it. 

“This is all part of the plan.” He tells me. “Things get worse before they get better. You just keep your head down, alright? You stick around with me and we’ll be safe. Everyone else was alone, but we’re together and we’re gonna end this all. We’ll set the city free, and then we’ll set the world free. No more fear. No more secrets. No more uniformity. We’ll destroy Dema.”

“What’s a Dema?” I asked, and he ignored me, as he always did when I asked questions I was too dumb to understand the answers for.

He babbles on about assassination and explosions, and I just let my eyes drift shut. Sometimes I listen to him and get scared, and that just makes me go back to the club scene. To take my medicine and forget and fuck and dance to music that crashes through my skull. It’s easier that way, but not when I get home and he’s waiting for me.

I’m a flower that wilts, grows brown spots from the pollution of the world. He tells me I am losing myself again.

But he is the one who is making everything so confusing. Upsetting a status quo that may not have been so bad. We thought we were happy after all, right?

-Me 

* * *

_ 015 03MOON 14 _

Joshua has figured out what we’re going to do to end it all. The final coup. He doesn’t tell me many details, which is for the best because I have loose lips when I’m high and our mutual paranoia tells us that  _ they  _ know that.

Three days. A big explosion. Joshua lives for the flash of light and boom and resulting chaos. He and some other sympathizers—friends of his I never knew about, were going to wipe out the government and then take their places. I know better than to question the logistics, as I am too dumb to know how to carry out and follow through on this plan. 

All I’m to do is to keep watch. 

I could be very good at observing; having a job is giving me this glowing purpose. I feel… productive. 

But do I feel good? Good as in a kind person. As sharing positivity. I don’t know yet, all I have ever seen from Joshua’s work is blood and disorder. 

But he keeps telling me to watch for the light. It will come soon. 

I look to the east where the sun rises and fall asleep before I can be touched by the warmth. 

-Me

* * *

_ 015 03MOON 17 _

It happens at noon. I haven’t been awake for noon in so long. 

Joshua hasn’t slept any substantial amount of time in the past few days. He’s been meeting other people, pouring over notes, obsessing over details. 

I rode him to try and make him go to sleep, but he kept whispering that now might be the last time. I think I cried, and he pet my hair till his hand fell limply to the mattress. He dozed. 

My only friend now, and we face the possibility that by the next night, one or both of us could be dead. Either way, everything is going to change. I am unsure that I want this. 

I look back on my previous notes and remind myself that yes, I am searching for something. I can no longer sit by as a passenger to my own story and let the ebb and flow of the social current dictate who I am today. I want my purpose and I want to reach a moment where I can definitively say that I am ultimate good or bad. A classification like that puts me somewhere where I am real and not just a body dancing to someone else’s rhythm. 

He whispered my pet name from the depths of his dream. “Spooky.”

“Josh.” I return the affection. 

He’s still sleeping as I write this and I can only hope he misses his alarm and the revolution. For all his flaws, he is all I have. 

-me

* * *

_ 015 03MOON 18 _

all is lost, as was expected. I am hiding but they’re going to find me. 

Josh is dead. 

I am trying to make the tears fall away from this paper, but excuse me if it all becomes illegible. I didn’t have a chance to screw anything up because I wasn’t even in place yet. We barely got into the front door of the government building before they started shooting. 

There were seven others, Josh, and I, and within minutes, four of them were bleeding out on the floor. Screams and smoke and confusion, soldiers advancing on us. All my life, I’ve never seen a police officer; we were all so docile there was no need for their visible presence. But in the midst of this clearly failing revolution, it became obvious that the might of the government was not anything we ever expected. 

Josh took my hand and we ran, crouching as low as we could while bullets ricocheted around us. Through hallways like a labyrinth and I kept my eyes on him. He seemed to know a way out—we alone would survive. 

I couldn’t see the bullet hit his back, but I felt its path as it shot past me. I was unharmed, but he arched, taking all its fatal force. He tumbled forward, as if he was still running and together we crashed to the ground. 

I begged for this not to be real, and his blood covered me as I tried to take him in my arms. 

“No!” He gasped. Blood gurgled from his mouth, and I could see he wasn’t going to be alive for much longer. “Run, Spooky. Run!”

I took his command as I always did. We didn’t say goodbye; the footsteps of the soldiers were too close. I kept going even though I had no idea or direction of where the exit was. I could feel them gaining on me and I was sure death was coming in the form of a bullet to match Josh’s. 

And then I felt a draft and my last hope came as divine inspiration. There was a garbage chute just big enough for me to dive into.  I fell, head over heels, scrabbling the sides to right myself so I wouldn’t break my neck on impact. The landing shook me, I crushed a mountain of cardboard boxes and the wind was knocked out of me. 

But I lived. 

No broken bones; I was lucky. I couldn’t hear any voices or guns down there, but I didn’t want to stick around for them to realize where I had disappeared to. Crawling, stumbling, falling in the dark, I maneuvered myself through the garbage till I found a cement floor. Blind, I felt my way along this tunnel till little lights illuminated. There were arrows to the sewers for the maintenance workers, and I followed, not knowing what would be waiting for me. 

I was down there for hours, my only company were the rats whose claws scratched the ground. By the time I found a way out, the sun was beginning dawn. My nightmare had started at noon. 

I found myself in a neighborhood I did recognize, and broken into the empty apartment of a friend who had gone missing a month before. It was all for the best that no one saw me; I was covered in blood and sewage and I need to hide. The shower I took was so hot, my skin is still burning. 

I’m in shock, I know. I expect him to burst through the door—of course he’d know where I am hiding. Josh is indestructible. He must have found a way

—was indestructible. 

They’re coming for me. I see ominous cars with lights searching the street below. I need to make a break for it at some point.  _ They’ll _ know this place is supposed to be empty if they’re somehow responsible for the owner’s disappearance. They’ll come knocking and I will need to be away from here. 

I’ll move at nightfall. Just a few hours away. 

This may be goodbye. 

-Me

* * *

_ 015 05MOON 17 _

Who I was when I started writing these journal entries— these letters— would be very confused by where I am right now, and who I have become in the time since. I haven’t been able to write for a long time, because I had no paper to record. I’ve been happy to find, however, that my memories are much stronger than they ever had been. 

Since Josh died, I’ve had to stay low, avoid anyone’s eyes. I knew they were coming for me and I was not clever enough to change my identity completely. I’ve never trained for this and every hole I crouched in was uncovered within hours or days. I was hunted and it was just luck that I’ve survived. 

It became inevitable that I would have to leave—better to risk death out there in Trench than to wait for flashlights and guns if I made a single mistake. I had heard enough about the Banditos to believe that if I went begging, they would take me in even though I am useless. 

I ran past the city limits, though no one was really chasing me. Unimportant, I think they just figured that someone as weak and soft as me, a junkie, would turn back soon enough, or else just die out there and they would be rid of their problem anyway. I had no food, water came from murky streams and I marched on to the hills. 

On the tallest, tallest building in the very east of the city, Josh had pointed to the merest suggestion of them on the horizon. 

“That’s where they are, the Banditos.” He told me, and so I set my eyes on them, and kept walking through bleeding feet and hunger pangs. 

The hills grew bigger until they towered above me. The water I walked beside became purer as I too was cleansed. My body sweat out all traces of drugs from my system and my thoughts became more logical. The colors of Trench were real. Green for living and life, everything I had been surrounded by was manufactured. This was truth. 

I slept in the open the whole way to that spot. The stars sang me to sleep. I had never known how many there were since the lights of the city had stolen so many from the sky. I love them. 

Even though I reached Trench, it was empty. I saw no sign of life and my ears could only hear the rushing water. Regardless, I knew this was safety—the Banditos must surely be around. I could almost feel their eyes watching me. Excitement upon completing my quest brought forth exhaustion, and I settled into the driest patch of sand I could find. 

I woke to fever. A week of living rough plus all that time hiding in the city had wore my body down. Exposed to the elements gave my pneumonia and the withdrawals didn’t  help my brain realign. I hallucinated the ground moving, swirling smoke around me. I saw creature crawling towards me, and somehow I stood and tried to run. They barricaded me into the valley and my only escape was up. I climbed towards the rising sun. 

When I squinted I could see figures waiting for me. I wondered if they were hallucinations too. They did nothing to harm or help me—the climb was mine alone. 

I knew better than to glance backwards. It would’ve sent me tumbling down the rocks to my certain death. 

I don’t know how I did it. I was sick. I was weak from a lifetime of pleasure and parties. I have always been told that I am only average, and maybe even less than, intelligence-wise. Maybe it was the drive for survival, the fact I came so far. I climbed and hoisted my body over each rock. The pain was brutal, and every foot seemed impossible.

I collapsed as I reached the top. I ate the dirt at the feet of those who waited for me. I needed to do this to prove to them that I was worthy to take a chance on. 

I surrendered my body and they carried me away. I don’t remember much about those first few days. They told me that I fought for my life yet again, but I slept through it. My sweat soaked the sheets and I cried out for mercy. In my mind, I don’t know where I went. I just know that I had battles there too. 

I fully returned to my body five days after I ascended, and woke to find that I was in their camp. It took some time for my legs to be strong enough to support my body, but once I could, they began to train me to be one of them. I am now on my way to being a fully fledged Bandito. 

I shed my colors—tossed away the neon and blinding technicolor, though some couldn’t be removed from my body. The Banditos are more muted, easier to camouflage, but the ever-present yellow makes me hopeful. I feel protected with  _ our _ color on me; in my hair, protecting my face, marking my chest with a X. 

I was remade. I could pick any name I wanted—they had no clue of who I was in my past. 

“What should we call you?” The Bandito who nursed me asked. My answer came as if I had gotten ready for the question without any awareness on my part. 

Josh wasn’t a good or a bad man, and he may have been insane. Even now, with all I’ve done—a club kid, an accidental rebel, now a Bandito, or at least in training—I’m not sure what I am. But I’ll take a new name, a concrete one— _ his _ —and try to make it a good one. 

-Josh

* * *

018 07MOON 10

I have stood here before and watched other escapees attempt to scale the walls of Trench. It wasn’t the only way in to our group, but it was certainly the hardest. I always felt a pang for anyone who tried this way, and most didn’t make it. 

We couldn’t help—this was  _ their _ journey. 

But the man below… I felt something. 

He didn’t even try to climb up to us. He wasn’t given the opportunity. He didn’t seem to expect us, starting to run before he was already tripping over himself. 

Unlike me, someone came for him. Some may say he gave up, but I’d say he faced the horse and rider with bravery and acceptance. I felt the pang in my heart that his control was stolen back, and how he trudged behind the cloaked figure—headed back to wherever he had come all the way from. 

The yellow flowers were our symbol. We planted them as a sign to the weary escapees, a signal of rebellion to our enemies. We kept the petals on us to even leave a temporary mark. 

I saw how they caught his eye—the trance fluttering and he looked up, right at me. He stopped and I knew what I had to do. A distraction. 

I threw my handful of petals, and others followed. The air was full of the blossoms, alive with  _ our _ color. 

The horse kicked and reacted, unable to cope with evidence of our freedom. The rider was upended and the man screamed “Cover me!”

He ran, trying to use our plume to conceal, but the plan was hopeless. Beautifully hopeless. 

He fell again and didn’t stand. Everyone else knew it was over—a pretty attempt, but nothing was to come of it.  _ He _ wouldn’t make it. The rider captured him, but his hands clung to our yellow flowers. 

I couldn’t ignore what I felt; hope, anger, protection. 

I have to find him. 

I have to set him free. 

This is the purpose I’ve waited for and I will plow through whoever is in my way. He will be rescued, I don’t care about the Bandito’s rules anymore. We shouldn’t just stand aside and watch someone be made prisoner again. I am ready to prove myself.

Goodbye for now. Cover me. 

-Josh

**Author's Note:**

> teeentyonepilots on tumblr
> 
> I've been so inspired by the au that they've created, so much so that I cranked this out in a 24 hour period. I'm also on a high because I've gotten my tickets for the Bandito Tour!


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